Spotify: the Ultimate Guide to the Streaming Service based on AI, Cloud and Big Data

You cannot play the tracks of an album or a playlist only in random mode, and you cannot Pass a song six times per hour at the maximum. You can access the “Daily Mix” playlists, but not Spotify Radio.

What is Spotify ?

Spotify is a musical streaming platform dedicated to music, podcasts, playlists and videos, giving users access to millions of songs and other artists in the whole world. In less than ten years, the Swedish company, founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, has become an essential tool for millions of people, forever changing the way we consume music and the functioning of the music industry.

Now that we have answered the question “What is Spotify ? », Let’s see how musician can take advantage of this platform.

With currently more than 345 million monthly users active worldwide, including approximately 155 million premium subscriptions, Spotify is the head of the musical streaming sector, in front of similar competitors such as YouTube Music, Apple Music or Deezer. If you distribute your music on Spotify, you can potentially be heard by more than 345 million music fans.

In the rest of this chapter, we will give you a more detailed description of the platform, as well as key information on how to distribute your music.

What differentiates Spotify from other musical platforms ?

Before streaming platforms become very popular, customers had to pay to download individual songs or complete albums from online music stores or retailers like Amazon and iTunes. With Spotify, customers do not buy music. Instead, users can choose to use Spotify Premium, a monthly premium subscription without advertising, or to use Spotify for free, through a free account that disseminates advertisements after a few songs.

While streaming has become the standard for music fans, other musical platforms have started to follow the trend, such as Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, Apple Music and YouTube Music, but Spotify remains the most popular streaming platform world.

So what are the differences between Spotify and some of its competitors ? Let’s take a closer look.

Spotify or Deezer ?

The two platforms are available in around 180 countries. Deezer has 16 million active users worldwide, compared to 345 million active users for Spotify. As an artist, you will therefore have the possibility of potentially touching more fans through Spotify.

The two platforms offer a free subscription, which broadcasts advertisements after a few songs, or a premium subscription. The Premium subscription allows you to have unlimited listening, without advertising, but also an offline mode allowing you to listen to your favorite titles, wherever you are.

Spotify and Deezer also offer a wide choice of playlists, created by their editorial teams and by platform algorithm. The playlists generated by algorithm (for example, Daily Mix, Discover Weekly for Spotify or Flow for Deezer) are based on your listening habits (the titles you like, share, save. ) to offer you a personalized experience, according to your tastes.

Spotify or Apple Music ?

We faced two of the largest streaming platforms in the world to discover what is the difference between Spotify and Apple Music.

The two platforms have millions of songs in their databases. Currently, the two platforms claim to have more than 70 million songs, but in terms of podcasts, Spotify is in the lead. Spotify is currently offering 2.2 million Podcast titles. In comparison, the selection of Apple Music podcasts is rare. To compensate for this lack, Apple Music offers exclusive radio programs on demand, hosted by Zane Lowe, Elton John, Soulection and many others.

If you are a music fan looking for quality content and tools to discover new music according to your tastes, the two platforms have everything you need. Apple users may think that Apple Music is just ahead of Spotify due to integration with their products, but accurately.

For musicians who want to put their music online, fortunately, you don’t have to choose between the two. The two platforms require that you are registered with a distributor, like Imusician. Continue reading to learn more.

Spotify for artists: what are the advantages ?

Part of the appeal of Spotify comes from its features. Its rich catalog of more than 70 million songs can be organized in personalized playlists. Spotify also has its own playlists, created by its editorial team and by the platform algorithm. Playing songs on these playlists can boost the career of a musician in terms of streams, fans and visibility.

The time when the musician needed a large record company to make their music heard is over. Today, any artist can be exposed to millions of listeners by finding a distributor and broadcasting his music on Spotify. Thanks to the low investment cost for artists and its wide range, this is the ideal place to make yourself known.

Musicians can also know their performance on Spotify using the application reserved for artists, Spotify for Artists. In addition to creating your artist profile, it allows you to follow your streams and your income, the habits of your fans and to discover the main geographic areas where your music is listened to, essential data to develop your fanbase !

How to add your music to Spotify ?

Now that you have learned how Spotify can help you touch fans from around the world, it’s now time to discover in detail how to distribute your music on Spotify.

Spotify only works with distributors. This means that you cannot put your music online directly on the site. A digital distributor, like Imusician, can connect to you to the main streaming platforms and help you put your music on Spotify.

If you want to distribute your music on Spotify via Imusician, nothing simpler. Just recover your audio files and your covers, then download them to our application. From there, you can choose an release date and plan your distribution. We recommend that you download your music two weeks before the requested release date to be able to submit it to the Spotify editorial team. You can also choose priority delivery if you need to have your music online faster.

If you want to know more, you can find all the details on how to Distribute your music on Spotify.

And after ?

In other parts of our guide, we will show you how to get the most out of your Spotify for Artists profile. We will explain to you how to claim your profile and use the integrated data to guide your career progress. We will also share some good practices to highlight your profile.

Faqs

Is the Spotify application free ?

Users can choose between Spotify Premium, a monthly premium subscription without advertising, or a free subscription that disseminates advertisements after a few songs.

What is the price of a Spotify subscription ?

As explained above, users have the possibility of choosing between a free subscription or a premium subscription. Spotify offers to date several premium subscriptions:

– Staff (1 account): € 9.99 per month after a month of free trial.

– Duo Premium (2 accounts): € 12.99 per month after a month of free trial.

– Spotify Family (up to 6 accounts): € 15.99 per month after a month of free trial.

– Student (1 account): € 4.99 per month after a month of free trial.

How artists are paid on Spotify ?

Spotify does not directly pay the artists for their respective listenings. Payment is made through your digital distributor. Spotify will transfer your royalties to your digital distributor 3 to 4 months after the end of the listening, which you can then consult in the dashboard of your distributor and have transferred to your bank account or PayPal.

At Imusician, we do not charge additional fees to withdraw your sales and streaming royalties. You can withdraw your money without minimum amount. For more details, we invite you to consult our Spotify guide for artists and labels.

Spotify: the Ultimate Guide to the Streaming Service based on AI, Cloud and Big Data

In a few years of existence, Spotify has revolutionized the music industry. This musical streaming service allows access to more than 50 million songs, podcasts and artists from around the world.

Instead What to buy CDs, or download MP3 files, Just connect to the service via the Internet. The user can connect using an email address, or a Facebook account. He then had access to a large catalog of content via the Internet thanks to the magic of streaming.

In addition, the platform uses algorithms to recommend music users according to the songs they have loved before. You can therefore discover new artists by letting yourself be guided.

In order to diversify its offer, in addition to music, Spotify has invested massively in podcasts. She notably bought the Gimlet Media and Parcast networks, and spent more than $ 100 million for a partnership with Joe Rogan.

Contents

How Spotify works ? Thanks to Cloud Computing

Spotify allows you to legally listen to music or streaming podcasts. The company, based in Sweden, Buy licenses from labels around the world to expand its music catalog. It pays for artists and intellectual owners according to the number of diffusions of their contents.

But how to truly work Spotify and streaming ? How does music come to your ears ? This may be the question you are asking yourself, and you are in the right place to have the answer.

THE musical files are stored on servers. As soon as you select a song in the application, a request is sent to the firm servers to download the song.

To save time, it can also be downloaded from computers from other users located nearby. It is A “P2P” approach “ .

When you listen to a song for the first time, it is then Downloaded and temporarily saved in the “Cache” your computer or smartphone. In this way, she will not need to be downloaded next time again. It can also be downloaded from your cache by other users nearby.

When he started in 2006, Spotify hosted his servers in his own data centers spread over 4 regions. In 2015, to deal with explosive growth, she then turned to Google’s cloud.

THE Cloud allows the firm Swedish to extend its capacities over its growth, save money, innovate and gain efficiency thanks to data transfer via the tools offered by the Google Cloud Platform ..

How Spotify uses AI, machine learning and big data

In addition to listening to streaming music, one of the Spotify forces is to make users discover New artists. Its recommendation features, such as “discoveries of the week” are based on AI and Big Data.

Thanks to its dozens of millions of users, The company collects a large volume of data On a daily basis: what are the most popular songs, what style of music pleases what user profile ..

Every day, users generate more than 600 gigabytes of data. In addition, the firm constantly explores the web in search of texts related to music to discover what internet users of artists or songs think.

Spotify is a “data-driver” company, which operates this data to cause algorithms of recommendations. THE system “discoveries of the week” Allows each user for example to enjoy a personalized weekly playlist.

This playlist is made up of songs listened to by users who listen and appreciate the same musical style and the same artists. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the service learns to Know the tastes of each user over time…

On which devices is available Spotify ?

Spotify is available on web browser, or in the form of an application For iOS, Android, Windows 10, MacOS, or on Xbox and PlayStation game consoles.

The service is also available On the Samsung Smart TV, Android, Amazon Fire, or even on Sonos, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Denon and Bose speakers. It can also be used on Google Chromecast and natively in certain car models.

Spotify on Google Home and Amazon Alexa

If you have A Google Home or Amazon Echo connected speaker, You can listen to your favorite songs on Spotify with ease. Just open the mobile application of your speaker on smartphone, and connect your Spotify account to the device.

Thereafter, you can use your voice to launch the music of your choice. For example, it is enough to order »» Hey Google, put a little disco on Spotify “” To launch a popular disco playlist on your Google Home via the streaming service.

If you have several speakers divided between the parts From your accommodation, you can also play music on each of them. To do this, you just have to create a group of devices from the application.

How to download music on Spotify ?

Technically, he is not Not possible to download music From Spotify. At least, not in the traditional sense of the term. You will in no case be able to extract a song in the form of a file to store it on your hard drive or engrave it on a blank CD.

Nevertheless, Spotify Premium makes it possible to make the music of your choice Available in mode “Off-line” . You can then access your favorite songs without being connected to the Internet.

This allows you to continue Listen to music when you don’t have the internet, even in the most remote places on the planet. In addition, even if the mobile data packages are now unlimited, you will preserve the environment by relieving the servers ..

At most, you can save 10,000 songs in offline mode For your Spotify account and listen to them on a maximum of five different devices. Just activate the “Download titles” button in the Playlist or the album of your choice.

Spotify: hackers steal data but accidentally expose them

Unlike the image conveyed in films, hackers are not always geniuses. The proof with a group of cybercriminals taken in their own trap ..

To access the personal data of Spotify users, pirates did not need to bypass the safety system of the musical streaming service. They were satisfied to try many passwords exhibited in previous data leaks.

Many Internet users make the mistake of using the same passwords on all websites and applications, and this is what allowed the thugs to access 350,000 Spotify accounts. They were enough to try these identifier combinations to connect to the service. This is called the “Credential Stocking” or “Berry attack” in French.

The evil operation was a priori successful, and Hackers could have celebrated their victory. However, they in turn made a serious cybersecurity error by storing stolen records on an unsecured cloud database ..

Anyone could access this database and consult the data without even needing a password. It is this error which allowed security researchers Ran Locar and Noam Rotem to discover the pot with roses by scanning the web in search of poorly secure data.

Rather than warning pirates, the researchers therefore published their discovery on the VPNMENTOR website. However, we ignore if the hackers were able to exploit Stolen identifiers before being caught in the bag.

A hacked Spotify account can be rented at a reduced price on the Dark Web, or sold to “click factories” to which artists call to falsify their streaming figures. It is also possible that other criminals have been able to access to this database before researchers ..

Anyway, following this revelation, Spotify contacted the users concerned To invite them to change password immediately. The Swedish company, in the same way as researchers, invites companies to never “recycle” their passwords and use a new one for each service ..

To avoid having to memorize a password for each application you use, we recommend that you use a password manager. Also consider activating security options as Two -factor authentication !

Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer… What is the best alternative to Spotify ?

Pioneer in the field of musical streaming, Spotify is also market leader with more than 140 million subscribers to the paid formula. There are nevertheless several quality alternatives.

Apple Music

The main rival of the Swedish giant is Apple Music, Apple streaming service launched in 2015. The free version is more limited than that of Spotify, but the paid versions are elbow.

The apple catalog brings together more than 50 million songs, and it is possible to integrate your own collection there thanks to iCloud integration. Apple Music subscription prices are identical to those of Spotify, but The Apple One program Allows you to enjoy Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, iCloud and Apple Arcade for € 14.95 per month.

YouTube Music

Another spotify rival is youtube music, Google streaming service. This platform replaces Google Play Music.

Again we find a free version funded by advertising. The paid version costs € 9.99 per month, like that of Spotify. The subscription is also Included with Premium Youtube for € 11.99 per month, And this offer also allows you to take advantage of youtube videos without advertising.

The advantage of Youtube Music is that we find Many little -known music and difficult to find. This is the only platform on which you can find remixes and alternative versions of songs.

L’Google recommendations algorithm is also one of the most successful, which is not surprising since the Californian firm is a leader in the field of AI and machine learning.

Tidal

On the musical streaming market, The Scandinavians are making war. While Spotify is a Swedish company, one of its main rivals is the Norwegian firm Tidal.

His eponymous streaming service is intended for real audiophiles. He offers to listen to music in Flac format.

To take advantage of this without compromise quality, you will have to pay € 19.99 per month. The standard subscription costs € 9.99 per month, as at Spotify.

Another strong point of Tidal is video content. More than 250,000 videos are available on the platform, in particular clips, concerts, or exclusive documentaries.

Deezer

Deezer is A French musical streaming service. In terms of musical content, the platform has little to envy to Spotify. However, it cannot compete in podcasts.

Deezer’s “flow” recommendations system surpasses that of Spotify on certain points. French also doubles the Swedish in terms of audio quality, With a Flac format at 1411kbps.

You can also enjoy the New Sony 360 Reality Audio format of Sony via the 360 ​​by Deezer application. On the other hand, on the free version, the audio quality is limited to 128kbps for Deezer against 160kbps at Spotify.

The price of the Deezer Premium subscription is € 9.99 per month, like that of Spotify. However, you can opt for the annual subscription at € 99.99 To save € 19.98 per year.

How much is Spotify ? Price and price model

There Free version of Spotify Allows you to try the service without spending a euro. However, the features are limited. In addition, advertising spots to finance the service regularly interrupts music broadcasting

You cannot play the tracks of an album or a playlist only in random mode, and you cannot Pass a song six times per hour at the maximum. You can access the “Daily Mix” playlists, but not Spotify Radio.

In addition, audio quality will be restricted. In settings, users of the free version can only choose low quality (24kbps), normal quality (96kbps) and high quality (160kbps). They cannot opt ​​for the very high quality at 320kpbs.

By opting for a monthly subscription, it is possible to take advantage Spotify Premium features. You can therefore listen to the songs you want, without advertising, in maximum quality. Several different subscriptions are offered.

L’“Personal” subscription is offered for € 9.99 per month, But can only be used for a person. The Subscription “Duo Premium”, meanwhile, costs € 12.99 and can be used by a couple. The “Mix Duo” is a playlist shared between the two users.

Finally, The “Family” subscription is priced at € 14.99 per month. It can be shared by a maximum of six members of the same home, with a “family mix” playlist shared between all users.

Spotify lets her employees choose the Travail

Spotify decided to Leave its employees the possibility of tele-work full time. Everyone can choose to work at home, at the office, or a combination of the two with a new flexible model. This possibility will be offered from the summer of 2021.

Titled “My work fashion” , The program will allow employees to decide with their managers how they will distribute their working time between their home and the firm premises. It will even be possible to work from a foreign country, with however some limits linked to jet lag and national laws.

If employees choose a place that is not located near a Spotify office, they will be able to enjoy a Coworking space subscription paid by the company. The objective of the Swedish firm is to become more flexible.

Telework and hybrid work are more and more popular concepts, especially Powered by the Pandemic of Covid-19 and the containment of 2020. Faced with this crisis, companies in all sectors had to rethink their concept of the workplace.

Only You: For an even more personalized experience on Spotify

With its more than 365 million users, Spotify is today a leader in terms of musical streaming. To satisfy these, the platform has just launched Only You, a new feature designed for celebrate listening habits of each user.

More concretely, Spotify “Only You” shows its users how unique their tastes are. She compares artists and genres of music that they prefer and the combination of their listening habits which stand out from the base of Spotify users.

A function that will also offer them the possibility of accessing several New personalized playlists , With songs specially selected according to the moment of day, mood and even the astrological sign of the user.

In addition to a multitude of statistical data on listening habits, Only You gives access to several new personalized reading lists containing specially selected songs. For example, among the newly launched products, enthusiasts will find a special combination for the “dinner of your dreams” or a list based on your favorite listening year.

Spotify launches Greenroom, its live audio application

Spotify announced the acquisition of the company behind the Audio Sports Audio Locker Room. The purpose of this buyout is to accelerate its entry into the live audio market.

The company concretizes this agreement with the launch of Spotify Greenroom. The latter represents a New mobile application that allows Spotify users around the world to join or animate live audio rooms.

Spotify also reveals the establishment of a fund for creators. This funding offers the possibility of fueling new application with more content in the future.

The Spotify Greenroom application Based on the existing Code of Locker Room . The Company informs that Locker Room users will see their application updated to become the Greenroom Experience, from today.

While Locker Room used a white and reddish orange color palette, the new Greenroom application is very similar to a spotify derivative. She adopted the same color palette, the same font and the same iconography as this application.

To reach the new application, Spotify users Connect with information from their current Spotify account . They will then be guided through an integration experience designed to connect them to their interests.

Spotify blocks users for “incorrect download” of securities with third -party software

Streaming services like Spotify have revolutionized online music consumption. They gave access to huge libraries at a reasonable price.

For example, premium subscribers can record music locally on their own devices . However, these titles can only be read in Spotify itself. Thus, those who hope to raise a private collection of music – playable on any device – must look elsewhere.

To try to fill this gap, many tools have appeared. The latter claim to help users to download and store Spotify titles in MP3 format. Even if it seems possible, some users have found that s Potify was capable of detecting their license offense and ending it.

Audials Music is one of these programs who exploited Spotify. He claims to be able to download Spotify content at a speed 30 times higher than normal. This tool allowed Internet users to quickly raise large audio equipment libraries in a practical and permanent format. But Spotify noticed this practice and suspended users of the service for abuse.

The Internet users of Audials Music published that they had received a Spotify email. The latter told them that abuses had been noted on their accounts and that they had been blocked.

Spotify tests a new subscription plan at a reduced price

In order to expand its offer and offer its customers more flexible prices, Spotify began to test a new subscription. This last starts at only $ 0.99 or about 0.84 euros per month .

Positioned just above the free basic level, Spotify Plus represents a significant economy Compared to the premium subscription. It includes advantages such as the absence of a limit of tracks or jumps and the freedom to listen to specific songs at will instead of being limited to reading lists. However, the disadvantage is that in exchange for this super affordable price, You will have to listen to advertisements .

While Spotify Plus has not yet been generalized, Spotify began to test his new subscription to the general public . A reader who sent screenshots of new test offers to The Verge.

For its part, Spotify then confirmed that the company was testing new parts in a press release. The company said it is still trying to improve the Spotify and perform tests regularly to clarify their decisions. It is therefore possible that Spotify more is changed or even canceled before being officially launched.

While Spotify is faced with the constant pressure of competing streaming music services. This new test reveals that the company is looking for a way to expand its user base while generating increased advertising revenues.